


Stranger Things

by Mireille



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Community: watcherlove, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-30
Updated: 2007-11-30
Packaged: 2019-03-17 23:57:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13670007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: "I'm afraid at this point, it's looking like a case of 'stranger things have happened.'"





	Stranger Things

"It's perfectly simple," Wesley said. "Clearly, my rescuer initially arrived a few minutes too late. Being possessed of a time machine, however, he went back half an hour, saved me from Vail, and then brought me eight months into the future to leave me on your doorstep. I'm sure we created any number of minor time paradoxes along the way, but you know time travelers; they're so careless about that sort of thing." Wesley folded his arms, more to keep himself warm than out of exasperation--though he certainly had reached the limit of his patience. The sun was shining brightly, but it provided precious little warmth, and while he'd have expected this sort of interrogation if he'd had the chance to think about it, the truth was that he hadn't.  
  
Giles only looked at him for a long moment; Wesley fancied he could see the man mentally sifting through an assortment of potential psychiatric disorders before he said, "You can't seriously expect me to believe that."  
  
"No," Wesley said, "But you must admit it's a better story than, 'I found myself in a park a quarter-mile from here, with no idea how I got there, why I'm alive, why I had this address in my pocket, or where I've been for the past eight months.'" He looked down at his ripped, blood-stained shirt in dismay. "Though clearly, wherever I was, it was somewhere without laundry facilities." He held his arm out behind him, making certain that Giles could see that direct sunlight was falling harmlessly on his skin. "And now, may I come in? It's bloody cold out here, and besides--" another rueful glance at his shirt-- "if your neighbors get a good look at me, they may be rather curious."  
  
"It's ten o'clock in the morning, Wesley," Giles said, just a bit sharply. "Of all the explanations for your miraculous return from the dead, vampirism isn't one of them." He stepped back, letting Wesley through into the house. Wesley followed gratefully; he'd been dressed for California in the late spring, not England in the winter.  
  
"Through here," Giles said. "This is a situation that calls for a cup of tea." He gave Wesley a wry smile. "I suspect it's actually more a situation that calls for a large whisky, but as it's a bit early for that, we'll have to make do."  
  
A bit early? Wesley thought. It was still May, in his personal calendar; as far as he was concerned, it was a bit  _late_. He clamped his lips together to suppress the bubble of inexplicable, hysterical laughter he could feel building in his chest. "A cup of tea would be lovely, thank you," he managed to get out at last, following Giles through to a bright, blissfully warm kitchen  
  
Wesley sat down in the chair Giles indicated, watching as Giles busied himself with the tea. "I don't want to be any more trouble," Wesley said, fully aware that even under the best of circumstances, Giles would consider his presence an imposition. "But I'd really prefer not to wear such a vivid reminder of... what happened." He couldn't quite bring himself to say, "of my own death." "Could I borrow something until I have a chance to replace this?"  
  
"Good Lord," Giles said, "I'm sorry. I should have thought of that." He poured water from the electric kettle into the teapot. "I'll be right back," he said, disappearing through the doorway.  
  
Wesley leaned back in his chair, studying his surroundings. He might not remember where he had been since he'd been--well, he supposed "killed" was still the word, even if it didn't seem to have been permanent--but the strangeness of his surroundings, the fact that a perfectly ordinary kitchen felt a bit like an alien landscape, suggested that this wasn't simply amnesia; he'd been somewhere else. Where, he didn't know--although some sort of limbo, outside this dimension, would probably best explain why there was an eight-month blank in his experiences--but he strongly doubted he'd been leading a normal life that he'd just forgotten.  
  
Giles returned a few minutes later, though he was empty-handed. "The bathroom's through there," he said. "Up the stairs, first door on the right. I imagine you'll want to clean up a bit, so take your time. I believe I've put out everything you'll need, but if you can't find something, let me know." He reached for the teapot and a mug. "Milk? Sugar?"  
  
  
"Two sugars, thank you," Wesley said. He accepted the mug, feeling the heat radiating into his hand. He hadn't thought of it before, but as soon as Giles had mentioned getting cleaned up, Wesley couldn't think of anything he wanted more than a shower, except possibly this tea.  
  
He went upstairs, gulping down half the tea before turning the water on. He had intended to hurry, wanting to get down to the business of finding out what had happened to him, but the dried blood on his abdomen--smears going down to his upper thighs from where the blood had saturated his clothing--gave him a moment of profound unease. He ran his fingers over the spot where he knew a scar should be, finding nothing but unmarked skin; when he examined his stomach in the mirror, his eyes agreed with his fingers. The blood was the only thing that told him he hadn't imagined the wound in the first place. Physically, at least, he was whole. Mentally, then? Apart from the gaping void in his memory, he didn't seem to be any worse off than he had been. A bit better, perhaps, he realized; the memories were still painful, but in this alone, it almost felt as though he'd lived the past eight months, achieving over half a year's distance from the pain.  
  
Wesley showered quickly, then toweled off and reached for the clothing that had been piled on the back of the toilet. Giles had given him a pair of track pants and some clean socks in addition to the shirt, and Wesley wadded up all his old clothing gratefully, stuffing them into the small wastepaper basket. He never wanted to see them again; he'd even replace the shoes as soon as he could, though he reluctantly put them back on for now. The only other thing he kept was the slip of paper he'd found in his pocket. His pockets had been empty apart from that, his keys and wallet lost somewhere along the way.  
  
Clean, dressed, and fortified with the rest of his tea, Wesley went back downstairs. Giles was still in the kitchen, but he'd brought out some of his books; they were piled in the middle of the table. "The Council has a better library," he said when Wesley came in, "and as things have been quiet lately, no one's likely to be using it at the weekend. But I thought we'd start here and see if we can come up with some overall direction for our research, first."  
  
"Research?" Wesley repeated numbly; the word should have made sense to him, but he was exhausted and still puzzling over what could have happened to heal his wounds so cleanly.  
  
"To find out how you got here," Giles pointed out, eyebrow raised in apparent concern that Wesley could have forgotten the most important question of the day.  
  
"Yes," Wesley said, shaking his head to clear it. "Yes, of course. Forgive me; it's been... rather a trying day." And it wasn't even eleven o'clock.  
  
Giles actually chuckled at his understatement. "Yes, I suppose it has," he said. "Sit down, at least. If you don't feel up to it, I can manage this without your help, but not if you insist on looming over my shoulder like that."  
  
Wesley pulled out his chair again, sitting down and reaching for a book. "What, precisely, are we looking for?"  
  
"I haven't a clue," Giles said, smiling again. There were more lines at the corners of his eyes than Wesley remembered, but other than that, it seemed the years since Wesley had last seen Giles had been kinder to him than they had to Wesley himself. Or perhaps it had simply turned out that even running the Council was less stressful than living and working directly over a Hellmouth. "It would help," Giles went on, "if I knew what, if anything, you do remember."  
  
"Very little," Wesley admitted. "I remember--" Dying. Clinging to the illusion Illyria had given to him. Lying to himself and letting himself believe Fred would be waiting for him. The thought of Fred still hurt, but not as sharply as he'd expected. "--darkness," he finished, not wanting to say more than that, but assuming Giles could fill in the most significant detail. "And I knew, somehow, the others--they're all dead, aren't they?" Giles nodded, and Wesley closed his eyes for a second. It was one thing to believe it, another to have it confirmed. Finally, he was able to go on. "Then I was here. In the park down the road, that is. I was lying on the ground, but I don't believe I was unconscious; it didn't feel like I woke up." It had felt as though he'd simply blinked into existence, although he didn't quite know how to explain and wasn't keen to try.  
  
Giles picked up a pen, making notes on a lined yellow pad. Wesley found it easy to get distracted by the movement of his hand over the page; he hoped this fascination with trivia would fade as he readjusted to being among the living. "And you came directly here?" Wesley nodded. "Why?"  
  
"I hardly wanted to walk around looking as if--"  
  
"No, I understand why you didn't waste time getting out of the open."  
  
Wesley had picked up a newspaper someone had left on a park bench near where he'd found himself; at first, it was to determine where--and when--he was; then he'd used it to hide the blood on his clothes as best he could before asking a passerby how to get to the address on the note he'd found. He assumed the man had believed Wesley was recovering from a drinking binge, and Wesley hadn't tried to clarify matters. It was far more logical than the genuine explanation, after all.  
  
"Then what did you mean?" he asked.  
  
"Why here? For that matter, how did you even know where to find me? You mentioned a note?"  
  
Wesley handed him the slip of paper. "This was in my trouser pocket," he said; surprisingly, the paper wasn't bloodstained at all. "And before you ask, it wasn't there before, and it isn't my handwriting." He massaged his temples; racking his brain for details of his missing eight months was giving him a headache. "I didn't even know it was your address until you came to the door."  
  
Giles' smile was a little tighter this time than it had been before. "That explains why you were willing to come to me for help," he said. "You didn't know you were."  
  
"I'd have come anyway," Wesley said. "Where else would I go?"  
  
"You have a point," Giles said. He stopped questioning Wesley, going back to the book in front of him. The silence felt strangely heavy to Wesley, but he realized that he had no reason to believe his perceptions were at all accurate these days, and shrugged off the feeling of unease. He opened the book in front of him, looking for something that might provide some clue to how he came to be here.  
  
After two hours, he was no closer to any answers. He was tired, hungry, and newly appreciative of the information retrieval system at Wolfram & Hart, but he'd found nothing to even hint at how or why he might have been brought back to life.  
  
Assuming, of course, that he had been, he realized with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He knew he wasn't a vampire, and he certainly  _felt_ alive, but he wondered if he'd know. "Do I have a pulse?" he asked abruptly, holding out one arm.  
  
Giles looked up in surprise. "You don't know?"  
  
"I don't trust my own judgment, and I'm afraid it's possible that I wasn't precisely  _resurrected_."  
  
"Well, you aren't a ghost," Giles said. "Your hair was wet from the shower, you're wearing my shirt, and you can drink tea." He reached out all the same, two fingers pressed against the inside of Wesley's wrist. His skin felt hot against Wesley's, the fingertips rougher than Wesley would have expected, and Wesley rolled his eyes at his own hyper-awareness of the other man's touch. Honestly, his attraction to Rupert Giles had been futile and meaningless back in Sunnydale; it was even more so now.  
  
"You feel solid enough," Giles said; Wesley knew he was only imagining the slight hoarseness of his voice. "And your heart is definitely beating." Racing, more like; his body obviously remembered months without even a casual touch, even if his brain didn't.  
  
Wesley pulled his hand away quickly. "It was just a thought," he said. "Thank you for humoring me."  
  
"It was an understandable thought. You're handling this far better than I could have done," he added, his tone seeming to hold some slight admiration, "but a few irrational worries are only to be expected."  
  
"I'm not handling this well at all," Wesley snapped. "I simply haven't yet remembered how to panic properly."  
  
That earned him another smile, the corners of Giles' eyes crinkling with real amusement. "I'm certain it will come back to you soon enough."  
  
Wesley pushed his book away. "Quite soon, I suspect," he said. "And I don't know that it's worth continuing to search for answers. Perhaps I should concentrate on what I'm going to do next, instead."  
  
"Perhaps," Giles acknowledged. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he said, "Wesley, I know our relationship has always been antagonistic at best, but I do have a spare room, and you're welcome to it as long as you need it. And I imagine I can be of some help to you; the Council may be less powerful than it once was, but I can probably make it easier for you to reestablish yourself. I know you wouldn't be here if you'd anywhere else to go, but--"  
  
"I never said that."  
  
"As you said, where else would you go?"  
  
  
"Where else  _would_  I go? If I'd known this was your address, I'd have been a great deal less apprehensive about coming here. As you said, we might not have been friends in the past, but you're the only person I can think of now who  _could_  find me some answers, if there are any to be found. And I do know you well enough to know you would do your best to help even someone you despise."  
  
"Despise?"  
  
  
"Perhaps only 'profoundly dislike,'" Wesley conceded, unable to decide whether he found it infuriating or encouraging to see that Giles' mouth was twitching in suppressed amusement. "The fact remains that I was lucky that I came here, however it happened."  
  
Giles was silent for several seconds before saying, "I don't dislike you, Wesley. I don't even know you." Before Wesley could protest, he added, "The man I knew in Sunnydale was lacking a sense of humor, to begin with."  
  
"You weren't precisely charming, yourself."  
  
"No," Giles said thoughtfully. "I suppose not."  
  
"You've improved," Wesley said. "Quite a bit, as it happens," and now it didn't take a touch to set his heart racing; the way Giles laughed at that was enough.  
  
"So have you."  
  
"Death apparently did me some good," Wesley said, and perhaps it was true. He felt a great deal better than he had in some time--not unaffected by the past, but not suffocated by it, either.  
  
"Will you stay until you work out what you want to do next?" Giles asked, and again, he hesitated. "Or do I need to convince you that the explanation is somewhere in these books? I'm afraid at this point, it's looking like a case of 'stranger things have happened.'"  
  
"That isn't much of an explanation."  
  
"So far, though, that's as close as I've come to an answer."  
  
"I won't say that explanations don't matter to me," Wesley said, "but I suspect I'll only find out when, and if, who- or whatever is responsible decides to tell me." He realized he hadn't yet answered the question, and added, "And yes, I'll stay. Thank you." He smiled. "If there's food here, that is. It's possible that I haven't eaten in months."  
  
"I believe I can find some," Giles said. "And later tonight, after dinner, I'll break out a rather good single malt I was saving for a special occasion. I think this qualifies. And then--"  
  
Wesley was relatively certain that he'd just interrupted Giles' explanation of a plan for getting Wesley settled again, with identification and money and, presumably, clothing that fit properly. He couldn't feel guilty about that. "And then," Wesley said, not letting himself care that he was being foolhardy, "we'll see what strange things happen next. I'm rather curious about that."  
  
Giles was silent for long enough that Wesley was almost certain he'd crossed a line from which there was no return; then he gave Wesley a smile full of promise. "I must admit," he said, "so am I."

**Author's Note:**

> [me on tumblr](https://mireille719.tumblr.com)


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